The Daily Signal - Sen. Diane Feinstein Dies, Government Shutdown On Horizon, Elon Musk Visits Southern Border | Sept. 29

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

TOP NEWS | On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., has died at the age of 90. A government shutdown lingers as deadline approaches. The Heritage Foundation is suing the Biden administration on behalf of the pro-parental rights group Moms for Liberty.  Elon Musk visited the southern border in Eagle Pass, Texas on Thursday. Over 50 people were killed in a bombing in Pakistan. A state of emergency has been declared in New York after heavy rains that have led to flash flooding. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm Virginia Allen. I'm Samantha Sherris. And this is the Daily Signal Top News for Friday, September 29th. Here are today's headlines. California Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein has died. She was 90. Our colleague Jarrett Stettman reports that hospitalization for shingles and other health problems led to her prolonged absence from the Senate in early 2023 and an inconsistent voting record when she returned in May. California's longest serving senator announced that she planned to retire at the end of her term in 2024. Feinstein's office issued a statement this morning saying, sadly, Senator Feinstein passed away last night at her home in Washington, D.C. Her passing is a great loss for so many, from those who loved and cared for her to the people of California that she dedicated her life to serving. The statement also said Senator Feinstein never backed away.

from a fight for what was just and right. At the same time, she was always willing to work with anyone, even those she disagreed with if it meant bettering the lives of Californians or the betterment of our nation. President Joe Biden said in a statement today that Senator Diane Feinstein was a pioneering American, a true trailblazer, and for Jill and me a cherished friend. In San Francisco, she showed enormous poise and courage in the wake of tragedy, became a powerful voice for American values. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, said on X, formerly known as Twitter,

that Senator Diane Feinstein was a true friend, an historic trailblazer, and an impactful advocate throughout her life in public service. The Senate is keeping her loving family and loyal staff in our prayers. As we head into the weekend, it appears that the government will be shutting down. Fox News's Chad Pergram posted on X that the House voted on an interim 30-day spending bill to avoid a shutdown and bolster the border. However, the vote failed 232 to 198. Among the 21 Republicans who voted against the bill were reps Andy Biggs and Eli Crane of Arizona,

Matt Gates of Florida, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Matt Rosendale of Montana, and Keith South of Texas. The Associated Press reports that the bill's failure ahead of tomorrow's deadline leaves few options left to prevent a shutdown that will furlough federal workers, keep the military working without pay, and disrupt programs and services for millions of Americans. According to reporting from ABC News, the White House estimates that 3.5 million federal workers will have to go without pay if the government shuts down, and that roughly 2 million of them will be military. debate over the House's border bill HR2 has been front and center during conversations about spending. Let's take a listen to some of Texas Republican Representative Chip Roy's comments from Thursday night on the House floor via his ex-account.

If we do our job and we do our job tonight, hopefully the House will have moved legislation that will fund upwards of 73% of government. That's a good thing. And we can move forward with figuring out how to get a the rest of our work done. And we can have a debate. But if there is any kind of a shutdown, I want my constituents and the rest of the American people to understand that it is because the President of the United States and the Senate Majority Leader, a Democrat, are choosing to shut down government rather than shut down an open border that is damaging the United States, undermining our security, endangering our citizens, endangering migrants, empowering cartels, empowering China, rather than doing our job.

David Ditch, a budget and transportation associate in the Grover M. Herman Center for the Federal Budget at the Heritage Foundation wrote in a Fox News op-ed today that even if there is a funding lapse, federal activities and employees deemed essential will continue to draw from the National Treasury. Examples include national security, border patrol, law enforcement, disaster response, and more. Ditch adds, shrinking the endless list of federal responsibilities would make the country less vulnerable to congressional. dysfunction. If polls are any indication, the American public considers Congress to be plenty dysfunctional. Stay tuned. The Heritage Foundation is suing the Biden administration on behalf of the pro-parental rights group, Moms for Liberty. The Heritage Foundation is concerned that the Biden administration has taken action against Moms for Liberty after the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled the parental rights organization as a hate group. The Daily signal, the Daily

Tyler O'Neill has been covering this story. He joins us now. Tyler, thanks for being here. Hey, glad to be here. So, Tyler, let's go back to the beginning of this story. Talk a little bit about how all this started. Why did the Southern Poverty Law Center label Moms for Liberty as a hate group? Yeah, so the Southern Poverty Law Center really cut its teeth and gained its reputation by suing KKK groups into bankruptcy in the 1980s. And then in the 1990s, and then in the 1990s, it kind of ran out of KKK groups to go after. So they decided, well, why don't we expand the definitions a little bit? Let's go against skinheads.

Let's go against people on the fringes. And then eventually they decided, well, you know what? We're not big fans of those conservative groups over there. And we can claim that they're haters too. And we'll just say they're anti-LGB, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant. and so they expanded into attacking conservative groups like Family Research Council and Alliance Defending Freedom. Fast forward to June of this year, and the SPLC has a long history of having an education arm called, it used to be called Teaching Tolerance. Now tolerance isn't woke enough for them, so it's learning for justice.

And that group has long pushed transgender ideology, it's pushed critical race theory. It's very on the left. So it made sense that they weren't big fans of parental rights groups like Moms for Liberty. But I didn't expect them to put as many of the groups on the hate map as they did. So in June, they released their annual hate map, which was months late. And it had hundreds of organizations they called anti-government extremist groups. It's interesting. They didn't technically call them hate groups.

But they're on the map with the KKK nonetheless, and everybody knows what it means if you're on that map. I mean, there was a terrorist who targeted the Family Research Council because it was on that map. So, like, this is a real thing. So they put them on there and they said these are anti-student inclusion groups. They're anti-government extremists because Moms for Liberty says we do not co-parent with the government. So apparently that is enough to make you an anti-government extremist these days. Wow. Interesting. Okay. So then how does the Biden administration play into this? Because the SPLC is a nonprofit, a Moms for Liberty is a nonprofit. So you can see you have two different nonprofits with very different ideologies fighting essentially one another standing in very different views. But then how is it that the Biden administration has become a player in this to the point where now the Heritage Foundation is suing the Biden administration regarding their involvement here? Yeah, so the Biden administration has used the SPLC as a resource.

You know, the FBI notoriously went after radical traditional Catholic hate groups citing the Southern Poverty Law Center in that memo this past January that was exploded in February and thank God they resented it, but we still haven't gotten an answer as to how this actually came about and whether the FBI considers the SPLC to be a reliable source. So we had that. But then we also saw that President Biden himself met with SPLC leaders and staff at least seven times. And their leaders and staff went to the White House at least 11 times since Biden became president. Add the fact that the National School Boards Association sent that horrific letter, which we later learned the White House requested, comparing parents, concerned parents to domestic terrorists, it sends up a lot of.

of red flags. And so we're the Heritage Foundation, the Oversight Project, is rightly thinking the Biden administration seems to think of parents as a potential domestic terror threat. The SPLC is saying they're similar to the KKK. Are they working together? And we need to know why. Because this is a huge issue. There are hundreds of thousands of moms and dads out there standing up for, again, what they see as sexualized education, transgender ideology being pushed down people's throats, and people being taught to judge one another by the color of their skin as opposed to the content of their character. So this is a big movement. If the federal government is demonizing moms and dads, that's a serious problem. And the Heritage Foundation is suing

to get answers because these agencies did not turn them over. So it's information is what the Heritage Foundation is after, and at the end of the day, they want to know, is the Biden administration working directly with groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center to essentially target groups like Moms for Liberty, correct? Yes, exactly. So Moms for Liberty is a good, like they're kind of the forefront of the parental rights movement. And so it's very important.

They're likely the number one target. So if this is happening, they'd be the ones. And these lawsuits are focusing on the FBI. the HHS, the Department of Education, and the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, among others. Interesting. Well, it's important to note that the Heritage Foundation Oversight Project, they filed Freedom of Information Act request to gain this information. They didn't hear anything back, so then they took the next step of filing these lawsuits. But Tyler, we appreciate your reporting on this. We're going to be continuing to follow this. It's a big story that really affects all of us,

as Americans, especially, our parents. So thank you for your work. Amen to that. Well, Elon Musk visited the southern border in Eagle Pass on Thursday. Earlier this week, the billionaire tech giant announced that he was going to visit Eagle Pass to see for himself what's really going on at the border. After record numbers of illegal aliens have been crossing from Mexico, Musk live streamed portions of his trip to the border, and he told viewers that he wanted them to get the real story on what is happening at America's border. We're just going to go around and talk to the major officials and law enforcement and whatnot that are here and just kind of eyeball the situation, get a sense of what's going on, and so you can get the kind of like the real story. This is real time, unfiltered, no, there's no preconditions, no nothing.

This is what you see is what I see. So what exactly did must see while he was down in Eagle Pass at the Southern Border? border. He spent a good portion of his time at a common crossing point in Eagle Pass and saw groups of migrants that had recently crossed over the border that were being taken into custody by Border Patrol. He saw groups of illegal aliens that had just crossed the border and he spoke with local law enforcement and political leaders. In recent days, Customs and Border Protection has seen as many as 11,000 illegal aliens crossing the border every single day. In Eagle Pass, they've seen a huge influx in a three-day period alone.

They had 4,000 illegal aliens cross into the city. Must ask Texas Republican Representative Tony Gonzalez a question that many Americans have likely been wondering. Is this normal or are we seeing an accelerating crisis? It's not getting better. It's getting worse. Last Friday was last Friday a week ago was a historic number, 11,000 people that came over. And then on Monday, that number increased. Today is Thursday, and that number increased.

We're only going in the wrong direction. This is a week. What happens two weeks from now? It's the wrong way. Among must posts on X during his trip, he asked, why do so many American politicians from both parties care a hundred times more about the Ukraine border than the USA border? One of must videos from the border has already gained nearly. 80 million views on X, and his trip has been widely covered by the media. Now the question is,

will must trip lead to any changes at the border? We'll find out. We have some sad news to report out of Pakistan today. More than 50 people were killed by a suicide bomber while dozens were wounded during a celebration for the Prophet Muhammad's birthday. The Associated Press reports that a witness told the outlet, I had blood on my hands and clothes from carrying wounded and that I will never forget these painful moments. People were crying in pain. The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan tweeted the Pakistani people deserve to gather and celebrate their faith without the fear of terror attacks, like the ones today in Balusistan and K.P. Our hearts go out to the victims and their families. We will continue to stand with Pakistan

in the face of these vicious attacks. Another blast was also reported out of Pakistan on Friday. CNN reports that the blast took place during Friday prayers at a mosque near Peshawai City and killed at least four people while 11 others were injured. CNN also reports that no group has claimed responsibility for the attacks. Finally today, a state of emergency has been declared in New York after heavy rains have led to flash flooding. In New York City, the flooding has caused subway delays and road closures. Earlier today, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said, I want to say to all New Yorkers, this is time for heightened alertness and extreme caution. If you are at home, stay home.

If you are at work or school, shelter in place for now. Adams says the city could see as much as eight inches of rain before the end of the day. Video shared on social media shows cars moving slowly through water-filled streets in New York City, and some cars are getting stuck in the high waters. For all of our Northeastern listeners, we hope that you stay safe this weekend. That's going to do it for today's episode of The Daily Signals Top News. If you haven't had a chance, make sure to check out our morning show right here in this podcast feed where we interview lawmakers, experts, and leading conservative voices.

On Monday morning, our colleague Tyler O'Neill, who joined us just a little bit earlier in the show, is going to be sitting down with D.A. King to discuss his battle against the Southern Poverty Law Center. Also, make sure you subscribe to the Daily Signal wherever you get your podcast and help us reach even more listeners by leaving a five-star rating and review. We read and appreciate all of your feedback. Thanks again for being with us this Friday. We hope you have a wonderful weekend. We'll see you right back here Monday morning. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation.

Executive producers are Rob Louis and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheras. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geiney, and John Pop. To learn more, please visit DailySignal.com.